If Virginia’s Tony Bennett or Gonzaga’s Mark Few brings home the Naismith Men’s College Coach of the Year award this year to accompany a probable No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, nobody would have reason to argue.

Bennett and Few have assembled two of the nation’s most impressive college basketball teams and have long ranked among the game’s best. But as good as they are, no coach in the country has accomplished more over the course of this season than their fellow Naismith candidate, Purdue’s Matt Painter.

If the point of the Naismith award is to recognize the coach who maximized his team’s potential, Painter should be the hands-down winner. Somehow the Boilermakers, who at the beginning of the season looked like one All-American and a collection of raw freshmen and spare parts, turned in one of the best seasons in their school’s proud basketball history.

Anyone who watched Painter’s Boilermakers open this season with a 6-5 record would have probably predicted that they’d do well just to sit on the NCAA tournament bubble in March. Sure, preseason All-American Carsen Edwards was scoring at an impressive clip, but this was a program that lost four seniors – Isaac Haas, Vincent Edwards, Dakota Mathias and P.J. Thompson – who averaged nearly 50 points per game last year and combined to score 5,100 career points. Aside from Carsen Edwards, the other returning Boilermakers had made 11 career starts, and they were preparing to compete in arguably the deepest conference in the sport.

Not exactly a recipe for success.

“I thought earlier in the year, we didn’t play as hard as we needed to,” Painter said Saturday on the Big Ten Network. “Our guys kind of hung in there, but we realized it. We had a real problem. We played real teams and got beat. We had real problems. We just tried to fix them.”

So how in the world did Saturday happen, where they beat Northwestern to hoist Purdue’s record 24th Big Ten title? How did they match a school record by winning 16 conference games, tying the 1987-88 squad that earned a No. 1 seed in that season’s NCAA tournament? How did they manage to win 14 of their last 16 despite Edwards shooting just 35% from the floor over that stretch?

It’s because Painter and his staff develop teams that become greater than the sum of their individual abilities. The guy has quietly been doing that for the last 14 years at Purdue, where he receives only a fraction of the attention that coaches like Michigan State’s Tom Izzo or Michigan’s John Beilein commonly get from media beyond their campus’ immediate vicinity.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the difference. Izzo and Beilein have both coached in the NCAA finals. Izzo won it all once and has made it to the Final Four six other times. Painter hasn’t led a Purdue team past the Sweet Sixteen – easily the biggest hole on his resume – although late-season injuries to stars Haas and Robbie Hummel also derailed two of Painter’s most promising campaigns.

This isn’t about past failings, however. It’s about the remarkable way that Purdue’s coach once again assembled a formidable team when nobody expected it to happen. Not this year, anyway.

Edwards remains one of the nation’s most entertaining scorers, but he’s incredibly streaky. Seniors Ryan Cline and Grady Eifert had never been asked to contribute much prior to this season, but they emerged as essential leaders this year – especially on nights where Edwards’ shot was off. Matt Haarms struggled to replace Haas as the starting big man early in the season, but he has been exceptional down the stretch. Nojel Eastern isn’t much of a shooter, but he’s big and physical and ranks among the Big Ten’s best defensive guards. And the new freshman foursome – Trevion Williams, Aaron Wheeler, Sasha Stefanovic and Eric Hunter Jr. – continues to progress, giving the Boilermakers valuable minutes off the bench.

Maybe there’s a future NBA player in that bunch, but it’s far from certain. That they managed to go 23-8 (16-4 Big Ten) while playing a schedule that Ken Pomeroy rates as the fourth-toughest slate in the nation – well, that’s nothing short of amazing. It says something about the personality of Painter’s players and it says just as much about their leaders.

“Our coaches have done a good job of assembling a team and getting guys that want to be at Purdue,” Painter said.

If there is a recipe for Painter’s success, that explains it. They have developed a true team of complementary parts, and because of their coaches’ steady guidance, the Boilermakers will make the 11th NCAA tournament appearance under his watch and hoist their second conference championship banner in the last three years. Accomplishments such as these are exactly what the Naismith award is designed to honor.